Gut instinct. Intuition. Hunch. Premonition. Call it whatever you want to, but these people definitely had a ‘feeling’ that something wasn’t right in regards to a certain situation that they were in. Check out the stories that they shared on an AskReddit thread.
Source list available at the end.
“I got off the subway at night. There was one other person about half a block behind me on my route home. Now, this was a totally normal thing, and it had happened a thousand times before. He was a totally normal looking guy and wasn’t even following me that closely, but I just had this bad feeling about it.
I had such a bad feeling that when I turned the corner on my way home, I broke into a dead sprint and hid behind a dumpster that was in the shadowy partway down the street. By the time that he came around the corner, I was already well-hidden and could see him from my hiding spot. As soon as I saw his reaction to the fact that I wasn’t there, I knew I’d been right to hide.
He started LOOKING FOR ME while muttering to himself. He went up and down the street and looked around the corners. I hid and held my breath until he was gone. It was terrifying. I’m so glad that I had had that sudden inexplicable impulse to hide and that I had listened to it.”
MissPredicament
“Several years ago on Thanksgiving, my mom was becoming extremely overwhelmed. The holidays have never been a great success in my family, and my parents have had a lot of issues communicating, which has led to a lot of stressful and tense dinners. If it wasn’t them, it was someone else starting a fire.
Well, this year was bad. My mom had been cooking for hours to get ready to head over to my cousin’s house. My dad was yelling about how we were spending too much money on the holidays. It got to a point where my mom told me, and my brothers to leave for the party ahead of them. We didn’t get far from the house until a really bad feeling started to sink into my stomach. I knew my brothers felt something, too. I said, “Can we go back?” And my older brother turned around immediately.
When we got there, my father was gone. He had left out of anger, and my mom yelled at him to leave. My mother was in her bed laying still with an empty bottle of sleeping pills beside her. She was still conscious when we came in, but she started shaking and was falling asleep. We called 911.
I later learned that the pills she had taken would’ve only put her to sleep for a long time, and they would not have actually kill her- but clearly, that was her intent. She has/had severe depression, and after this she got some real help.”
ManguaHa
“Not me, but my mom. When I was about 10-years-old, I got invited to spend the night at my really good friends home. My mom said no. I begged her to let me go, but she was adamant that I couldn’t. She said that she just didn’t feel right about it and that no amount of pleading was going to change her mind.
A few weeks later, my friend’s dad was arrested for child pornography. After he went to trial, it was also found that he had also molested several other young girls. He would have his daughter, invite them over for a slumber party, and then touch them when they went to sleep. If my mom hadn’t trusted her gut feeling, I could’ve been one of his victims.”
MuttsAndMalarky
“I work at a daycare. One of the mothers gave me the heebie jeebies. She would show up randomly and would be like, ‘My baaaaaaby. I neeeed my baaaaby.’ Like moms love their kids and miss them, but her obsession with her daughter really made me feel weird.
She ended up killing her daughter so she could be an ‘angel.’ It really messed me up when I found out what had happened.”
ZombieBoobies
When I was younger, we would go to visit my aunt a lot. Her brother-in- law was often there, and sometimes we would watch her kids for her. Well, my sister and I really didn’t like him, and we told our mom. He made us feel uncomfortable. We didn’t want to be around him, even though he never did or said anything bad to us.
Later, it was discovered that not only was he sexually abusing his teenage daughter, but he and his girlfriend were raping my infant cousin and taking photos of it. He’s in jail now, and for a very very long time.
adriarchetypa
“One night, when we were back in college, my friends and I went on a booze run. We lived in Flint and were at a friend’s house that was in a relatively bad neighborhood. We made our friend, who was 21 at the time, go inside while the rest of us waited outside (Yay, for underaged drinking!).
As we were sitting in the parking lot, we noticed a guy who was standing by the trunk of his car a few rows of parking spots ahead of us. I had a bad feeling about him, so I kept watching him the entire time while my friends were all chatting and laughing. I noticed that my other friend, who was driving, was also watching him as well.
Sure enough- after watching us for a second, he popped the trunk, pulled out a pistol, and started walking towards us. We quickly got out of there and floored it around the parking lot, right as our friend came outside, yelling at him to “Get in” and sped off. It turns out, there had been a ton of carjackings in that area over the last few months.”
Eldium
“When I was in University, I was walking home from the bars in the Byward Market in Ottawa with my roommate at the time. It was about 2:30AM, and we were looking forward to getting home and ordering some pizza when we came across two guys and a very drunk girl.
Initially, we didn’t think anything about it because it was a pretty common sight on a Friday, but as we walked behind them for a few minutes, we started to notice just how out of it she really was. One of the guys was essentially just carrying her while her clutch was loosely dangling off of her limp wrist.
Our street came up, but instead of turning down it, we decided to see what was going on. The guys explained to us that she was one of their girlfriends and that she had had too much to drink, so they were taking her home. We asked them a few more questions like: ‘What bar were you guys at?’, ‘Where does she live?’, and ‘Is she an Ottawa U student?’, etc.
They gave pretty convincing answers, but at the same time, they seemed really uncomfortable and wanted us to go away. During our conversation, the guy holding his “girlfriend” shifted her position to get a better grip, which caused her arm to dangle down and drop her clutch.
Before they could move, my roommate grabbed the clutch and took out her ID. My roommate then asked if they knew her first and last name along with her birthday. That’s when things changed. The other guy got really aggressive and confrontational while the other one went silent. They didn’t know her name OR her birthday. I then pulled out my phone and called police. The guy dropped her, and they took off running.
We waited with her for about 10 minutes until the police and EMS got there. We gave a statement but didn’t have much to go on other than their descriptions. The police told us that they had suspected that she had been dosed and that she was lucky that we had happened to be walking behind her.”
gmoney5786
“My oldest daughter (in her 30s) stopped by my work one day and introduced me to her new boyfriend. He seemed a little ‘off’ to me, but I decided that it was just that ‘guy-dating-my-daughter’ thing and let it go.
Later, he met my wife and I. She told me that he also seemed a little ‘off’ to her as well. She has pretty good instincts about people, so we decided to do some more investigating.
We typed his whole name into Google. The first result that came up was of a mug shot from a couple of years ago, and the third one was for an active warrant. We did some more digging and found 3 warrants from different counties, an extensive record (Check deception, theft, driving while suspended, driving after a lifetime suspension, and driving while a habitual traffic offender), and a brand new marriage license for my daughter and him.
They were going to get married later that week.”
“Of course we had already told her about him. However, she insisted that he had already told her about “all of that” and that he had “taken care of it.” We emailed links to her roommate (who then showed them to her), but we still didn’t have any luck talking her out of the relationship. They were in love, and everything was going to work out “okay” in the end.
We sent in an anonymous tip, and he was arrested the next day at her apartment. My daughter then found out that he’d been pretty much lying to her about almost everything. He’d entangled her into a business that he was trying to start that mostly involved her financing things for him because his credit was so trash due to all of his records for bounced checks and theft. She’s still working to untangle herself from that.
He’s still in jail, and according to her lawyer, he will be for at least two years depending on what happens in two other counties.”
Wadsworth_McStumpy
“When I was a little kid, I stepped outside to walk home from my neighbor’s two doors over. I smelled a bear, which is common where I live. If you’ve ever smelled a black bear, it’s not that different from a skunk which is what my friend’s mom had told me that it probably was when I had asked her to drive me home (even though my house was literally right around the corner).
The thing is, a skunk’s smell is strong but doesn’t travel. A bear’s smell is more… permeating? Begrudgingly, she drove me only to see the bear sitting on my back steps outside of the door that I would have tried to enter my house with. Black bears aren’t that vicious, but my friend’s mom apologized immediately for not believing me. I could have walked straight into that thing at the age of 12.”
WreckweeM
“My sister once called me downstairs to talk to my dad over the phone. At the time, it was a pretty regular thing that we did like maybe once a week, and it wasn’t at an unusual time or anything. However, this time my stomach dropped, and I wanted to be sick. I really, really didn’t want to answer.
Turns out, my grandfather (who I liked very much) had passed away very unexpectedly. I still don’t understand what it was. I got nothing from the reactions of my family because he wanted to tell me first, and it had started before I saw any of them. There also was no news, medical or otherwise, about my grandfather beforehand.”
Morgoth_the_DM
“I was playing basketball and came down really hard on my leg. I couldn’t walk and had to be carried off.
‘Hey mom, something’s wrong. Can you take me to the hospital?’
‘No, you’re fine. It just needs time.’
Fast forward a week later, I was finally taken to the hospital, and it was a broken tibia.”
TheMiddlechild08
“We were at a party at a friend’s place. One of his new colleagues, who he had befriended, also attended. Something about this new guy just screamed ridiculous to me and the more that he conjured up racist conspiracy theories and went on about ‘Prophecies,’ the more I was concerned. Next day, I said to friend, ‘Don’t be near this guy.’
Couple of months later, he slit his girlfriend’s (who was also in attendance at said party) throat outside in broad daylight and then turned the knife on his own neck when bystanders prevented his suicide. Last I heard, he was in prison.”
OfFiveNine
“My friend asked me for a ride home. I told him I wasn’t going his way and he was like, ‘Okay, I’ll catch a ride with those people.’ I wasn’t a huge fan of the people he was going home with so I said, ‘Screw it’ and gave him a ride.
Turns out, the kids who were going to take him home decided to speed down a windy, wooded road near his house at 80mph. They hit something and flipped the car multiple times. They all lived but barely. The EMTs said that if they were bigger kids (they were all scrawny and under 5’10”), they would have all been crushed.
My friend who almost went with them is 6’2″. He absolutely would have died that day.”
fwooby_pwow
“My grandparents were driving up a steep mountain road behind a logging truck when my grandmother started having a mild panic attack. She just kept saying, ‘Something’s not right… pull over. We need to pull over.’ So, my grandpa did and settled her down. After a few minutes, she was fine and they kept driving. A mile or two up the road, the load of trees had come loose and spilled off the truck.”
MicMcKee
“I got to the airport early, went to get something to eat at the restaurant, and boarded the plane. Everyone was on, and I suddenly got a feeling of panic. Nothing else, just panic. I was used to traveling 3/4th of the month back-and-forth every week, so I had no problems flying. But in this case, I just had to get off that plane. I grabbed my stuff, ran past the flight attendant and said that “… They shouldn’t wait for me, I would get another flight, and sat down trying to calm down.”
An announcement came on over the speaker that they were looking for me because the flight was leaving. It left, and I was watching the flight start to take off (this was in Detroit by the way). Then, it happened. The worst cramps I ever had, so I ran to the bathroom.
It was food poisoning from the restaurant. I would’ve been on a 2-hour flight stinking up the plane while ejecting the contents of my stomach from both ends. I am sure the entire passenger compartment would have “Thanked me,” though, they don’t even know.”
TheRealOneTwo
“I was at this party once in college, and these two older drunk guys showed up. The place was packed, and most of the people there were drunk. However, I noticed that something was a bit ‘off’ about them. They never smiled and werent really talking to anyone. Finally, someone accused them of feeling around in their back pocket, and as it turned out, they had been lifting wallets from drunk college kids. Once confronted, one of the guys stabbed the kid in the stomach with a smallish knife. They left slowly and were never caught. It was pretty surreal. The kid who got stabbed was fine.”
Z_witha_ZED
“This happened almost 30 years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I was probably 8 or 9 at the time and was at the store buying some candy for the weekend with the girl from next door. She was one year younger than I was.
A car stopped. The man inside opened the passenger door and asked my friend and I to get into the car. He was picking us up on our parent’s behalf (at least that’s what he told us). I could not shake the feeling that something was wrong and remember thinking: ‘This is what my parents were talking about!’
I grabbed my friend’s hand and said that we lived in the house that was ‘Right over there.’ I pulled my friend with me, went to their door, rang the bell, went straight in, and told the people living there what had just happened.
Turn outs, I was right. We were about to be kidnapped.”
bipbopbipbopbap
“There were these two guys that I had met in high school during our senior year who seemed alright, but for some reason I always had this ‘feeling’ that I couldn’t really trust them. We end up going to the same college and being in same circle of friends, but I still didn’t really trust them. They ended up burglarizing a friend of mine’s house (right after a big party) and were caught fleeing the scene in their car by a flatmate. They gave all of the stuff back after being confronted, but everyone cut ties with those two.”
EnumuShiki
“It was 1:30AM, and it was raining. I was riding my motorcycle down a four-lane road (with two lanes in each direction and a middle turn lane). I saw a car that was approaching a stop sign that was perpendicular to me in the parking lot of a bar, and I though to myself: ‘He’s going to turn left in front of me.’
I was going 45mph. I let off the throttle. At about 200-250ft from him, he did exactly what I thought he was going to do. I grabbed my front and rear brakes. The back tire locked up and kicked out to the left. I had maybe 40-50 feet in which I would either highside in front of the car and likely be run over, slam into the driver door or rear driver door, or jump off to the right in a tuck and roll fashion.
I jumped and my motorcycle slammed into the rear driver side of his car. I had a couple scratches, bruises, and a sore tailbone. But I wasn’t run over, or hanging out in his back seat via. glass window. Thank God for my spidey senses.”
ReallyNotRoot
“A little different perhaps, but I used to work for a company making barns. We were installing a rail made from old oil lines. I was using a large chop saw to cut the threaded ends off the pipe.
A chop saw is basically a large gas powered chainsaw with a 14″ diameter fibre blade in this case. I had gotten to the last cut, and as I stood up, I had the weirdest feeling that something was wrong. I didn’t know what, but I knew that something was ‘off.’
I looked around, checked my cut (which was good), and didn’t mark the concrete below. I stood there for a solid 5 minutes with a saw in my hands trying to figure out what was wrong. Everything was looked good until I moved the saw enough to notice that a large hole was burning into the shin of my jeans. Turns out, I had stood in the sparks. Luckily, there was enough left for shorts.”
Syncrion
“A guy came to the door one day looking for my mom. I was probably 13 at the time. Immediately, I had most of my body behind the door and was ready to shut it. I just had this awful feeling about him. He said that he hadn’t seen her in a long time and that he was just coming from church and was in the neighborhood. So, this guy was basically trying to communicate that he was a ‘good person’ and everything, but his weird smile just made me trust him even less. I told him that my mom was napping. She wasn’t. She was at work. So, he left a note for her with his name and number on it. I took it, closed the door, and then locked it. Then, I looked at the note and immediately recognized the name. It was my uncle. I hadn’t seen him since I was 5 when he went to jail for murdering my aunt and cousin.”
phridoo
“My dad had just left for an out-of-town business trip. I was pretty young at the time, and I woke up from a nightmare and started freaking out because I thought something horrible had happened to my dad. My mom came in and calmed me down, and I went back to sleep.
Turns out, my nightmare occurred right about the time the taxi that my dad was taking to the airport got into an accident. My dad was fine, but it was one of those very weird moments in life.”
felonious_kite_flier
“I was walking with my daughter last week, and we heard a siren as we approached a crowded intersection. Instead of stepping close to the edge of the street and waiting for the walk light like usual, my daughter stopped well back, on the edge of the grass, and touched my arm so that I would do the same. A full thirty seconds later, a police car (campus cops) came screeching up through the traffic and drove ONTO THE SIDEWALK to get around cars stopped at the light. If we had been in the customary pedestrian waiting spot, I don’t know if he would’ve seen us, and I AM sure that he wouldn’t have been able to stop. I asked my daughter why she had stopped so far back and she said, “I don’t know. I just knew that we should.” Smart kid!
LininOhio
“I heard a strange noise when I woke up. I looked outside my bedroom window to see if anything there made that noise and saw my oldest cat sitting on the windowsill outside of the other bedroom. She was staring into the room as if there was something in there that she didn’t like at all but couldn’t look away.
At that moment, I knew there was something or someone in the other room. I heard the noise again. It was like a soft squeaking as if someone was shifting his weight from one foot to another on a wooden floor (I don’t have wooden floors).
I told myself that there couldn’t be an intruder in that room because it makes no sense that someone could get in there without waking me up. So, I gathered my courage and went to check it out. When I got to the doorway, I saw two of my other cats in the hallway staring into the other room still very agitated.
I peeked around the corner and heard the squeaky noise again. It was one of my neighbour’s cats, and it was very afraid and being trapped on my desk by my cats.”
taliesin-ds
“It was Christmas 2006. My girlfriend and I were at the mall doing some Christmas shopping. I was there to buy my father a watch as he hasn’t owned one in a while. We literally hit up every store in that mall, and I couldn’t decide on which one to buy him (hours spent and nothing).
It was about a 45-minute drive home, and my girlfriend was frustrated with me. Why couldn’t I pick one? What was going on? I pulled the car over and started crying. I couldn’t explain it. I told her that I didn’t know why I was crying and that I didn’t know why I couldn’t pick a watch, but I didn’t think that he was going to be around long enough to use it. Why buy a watch if he doesn’t have that much time left? I ended up finding one, and we had a great Christmas.
However, in the last week of March (3 months later), he got sick. Turns out, it was a MRSA infection, and he passed away on March 31st. I walked into his hospital room after the doctor’s failed to revive him to say goodbye. The watch was on the window sill. I grabbed it, and as I walked out while I was still in the hall, I remembered that premonition.”
MasterofDruss
Posts are edited for clarity.